


come to bed with me

by kybercrvstals (m_iri)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: M/M, in which Hux really really needs to sleep, seriously someone handcuff him to the bed so he has to nap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-06-06 08:00:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6745921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m_iri/pseuds/kybercrvstals
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which there is a conflict of interests -- that is, Hux has work to do, and Kylo Ren would much prefer his General to come to bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	come to bed with me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wacomintuos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wacomintuos/gifts).



> Based on the prompt, "I also love the idea of Kylo being unnecessarily needy and affectionate, something Hux would pretend to dislike, but really he enjoys his presence and all."

Phasma slides into the booth in the senior command lounge and orders two Generals, black.

The bartender droid salutes, jovial, and starts to make the drinks.

To Hux, she says, “Anyways,” and launches into a detailed account of a vivisection she had had a number of cadets perform on their last planetside deployment. He sinks his cheek into one hand and stares at the bottle-lined wall behind the bar, letting his eyes slip out of focus.

He is tired. He is tired, and the feeling is marrow-deep. Hux purses his lips, trying to catalogue everything he must do before he can sleep again, but the names and lists slip out of reach, slick, too hard at this point to keep and count and track. Datapads were invented for people like him, he muses darkly. People with too much work and too little time in which to do it. People in charge of upwards of one hundred thousand lives, a flagship, a planet, and Kylo Ren, who on a daily basis caused Hux more stress than the rest of it all combined.

Something warm curls at the back of his mind, and he braces himself. The thought doesn’t come immediately, but it arrives soon enough.

_You’re thinking about me. Flattering._

He feels his lips thinning into a line. _Out of my head_ , he thinks, with as much force as he can muster.

Ren retreats, leaving a lingering sense of amusement behind him, a feeling that translates roughly to: _if you wanted me gone, why did you think my name?_

Hux wants to say that he has every kriffing right to use whatever names he would like, and that his thoughts are his own, but the warmth is gone, and so is Ren.

When the droid puts the drinks down in front of them with a whirr and hum, he has to fight to focus his eyes again. Hux blinks, hard, then looks down. He takes the drink and sips at it.

Phasma stares at him expectantly.

“I’m sorry,” he says, brushing the corner of his mouth with one gloved thumb, blinking again. “I’ve quite lost the train of conversation.”

“Drink your caf,” she sighs. “You need it.”

They turn their stools to face the rest of the lounge, sipping at their Generals: triple-shot cafs with a dash of something, sweet and sticky, from a thin-necked bottle. For all the times he had ordered the drink – so many it had been named after him – Hux had never asked what it was. He doesn’t want to know.

He swallows another mouthful, feeling just a little less corpse-like for the sweetness of it. “How long?” he asks.

“Going on forty-two hours,” Phasma informs him. “Nowhere near a record.”

“Hm,” Hux says, and frowns.

“Were you aiming for a personal best?”

“No.”

“Building up a tolerance?”

“To?”

“Lack of sleep?” Phasma’s eyes flicker to the lounge door, and immediately, she tips her head back, shaking out her colorless hair, adjusting how she sits to show off the curve of her chest, her hips. “The near-poisonous levels of caf you consume?”

Hux follows her eyes to a silver-haired woman, too young for the lines on her face. She’s petite, pretty. Her uniform fits in such a way that Hux suspects she could suplex him without batting an eye. Glancing back at Phasma, he finds her eyes locked on the new arrival, appraising. Hux snorts. She always liked women who could beat him bloody with both hands tied behind their back.

“That’s my type,” she had said when he brought it up to her for the first time. Leveling a finger at him, Phasma had paused. “You,” she told him, “don’t have a one. A type.”

“Do I not?” he had asked, voice flat.

“No. You don’t like people, period.”

Knocking back what remains of his caf, Hux twists one corner of his mouth up, remembering the remark. It still holds true, he supposes. Kylo Ren does not count as _people_. Kylo Ren hardly counts as _human_. Twisting in his seat, he turns and hands the mug back to the bartender droid. “Another,” he says, and taps the rim.

By the time he leaves, there is enough caf in him to power Starkiller Base. Hux is almost giddy with it. No suns necessary, he thinks, drumming his fingers against his thigh. Then again, if conquering the galaxy were as easy as putting back caf, he would have been crowned emperor long ago.

On the bridge, no one dares say anything about the tremor in his hand. They do, however, jump to complete his orders a little quicker than usual. Standing with his back to the field of stars visible through the transparisteel windows, Hux surveys them, trying to catch them looking his way. He thinks, maybe, that they are concerned. He can’t fathom why. He could destroy planets with the caf in him right now. He could burn suns, tear down empires, build new ones. He could even complete everything on his to-do list – with luck. And another General or two.

 _I shudder to think what two of you could accomplish_ , says a voice in his mind.

Hux’s eye twitches. _Anything_ , he thinks, _everything_. _One of me could do as much already._ And then, as an afterthought: _Get out of my head._

_I like it here._

_Lonely little monster,_ he thinks, cold. _Don’t you have duties to perform? People to kill?_

In response, Ren sends him an image of Hux’s own quarters, and of his bed, the sheets pulled back, and Ren’s bare legs against the dark sheets. Hux thinks it’s supposed to be inviting, but it strikes him as funny instead, somehow. It is the forty-sixth hour since he’s slept.

The image in his head shifts, dispels, turns into the grey-green cloud that means _worry_.

“Get out of my head,” he says, aloud this time.

No one on the bridge looks at him. Such declarations don’t strike them as odd anymore, he supposes. Not since Ren came on board.

 _I like it here_ , Ren tells him again, quieter. _I like_ you _here, with me._ There’s worry again. It’s more – green. Hux frowns at the polished floor of the command deck, wishing he had a way to articulate the change that a psychologist wouldn’t feel the need to include in their ever-growing list of the ways in which Hux has slowly been losing his mind since Kylo Ren arrived. _Come to bed_ , the Knight thinks from half a ship away.

Hux squares his shoulders. He can’t sleep yet, can’t rest. He has work to do.

“Mitaka,” he says, voice too loud. “Start work on plotting flight paths for the transports for missions for the next seven cycles. No – nine. Nine cycles.”

“Yes, sir,” says the lieutenant, and turns his nervous eyes to his console screen.

To no one in particular, Hux adds, “And someone have another General brought.” Somewhere on the bridge, someone laughs and is quickly shushed.

The drink arrives within six minutes.

Hux is bent over Mitaka’s console, frowning at it, hashing out the finer details of coordinates and fuel estimates and figures when it comes, and the lieutenant has to clear his throat twice to get his attention.

“Sir,” Mitaka says, staring at something just behind his general’s head. “Your – drink.”

“Yes,” Hux says vaguely. He holds out a hand behind him. “Finally.”

“And here I thought I brought it in good time,” says a low voice, thick with artificial modulation.

Hux whips around so quickly it makes his vision spin and his balance tip dangerously to one side. A strong hand comes out and steadies him, gloved fingers closing over his elbow. A moment that feels like an eternity passes as Hux rights himself. “Ren,” he says, pressing the heel of one hand to his forehead. “Get off.”

Kylo Ren does not move.

Blinking fast, Hux glares at the Knight. _Everyone is staring_ , he manages, only mostly certain he has not said it out loud.

The black mask swivels to one side, then to another. “Let them.” Ren extends the drink, still in the hand he had not used to catch Hux. “Your General, General.”

Hux snorts. He takes the drink.

If he had allowed himself to hope that Ren would leave after this strange exchange, he might have been disappointed; as it is, Hux makes a policy of never letting himself hope for anything when it comes to the Master of the Knights of Ren. As such, when Ren lingers like a sad-eyed pet – albeit in a black mask and full cloak and boots and gear – it is merely another item on the list of things Ren does to make his life miserable.

 _You like it_.

Hux adds Ren’s obsession with prying into his mind to his list, too.

Over the next hour, he collects more and more items: the way Ren stands too close, the way he touches Hux’s shoulder to get his attention when a word would serve, the way Hux starts finding images of his bed flashing through his mind with greater frequency, making him stumble mid-phrase, sometimes, overcome with the urge to bury himself in soft sheets and Ren’s dark curls.

 _You’re embarrassing me_ , he thinks at the Knight, and wants to scrub at his face with the force of his exhaustion and annoyance. The caf is long since gone, and the holofile he is examining hurts his eyes.

 _They don’t see_ , Ren assures him. Right now, he is standing the farthest from Hux he has been since he arrived, leaning against a railing near a terrified junior navigation officer. _They won’t remember_.

“That’s not the point,” Hux mutters to the holofile, and flicks to the next page.

 _Come to bed_.

Scowling, the general shakes his head, and makes a note in his datapad, recording something the holofile contained. “Why don’t you make yourself useful,” he tells Ren, “and fetch me another coffee?”

_I would rather you put me before your work, for once._

“How needy,” Hux mutters, and shakes his head. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches the flash of pale skin against the black command deck as someone turns to stare. “It won’t happen.”

Abruptly, Ren’s dark form lurches into motion. He stands up straight, helmet snapping towards the direction of Snoke’s chamber. Hux tears his eyes from his datapad, following his line of sight. “Yes?” he asks, impatient.

“The Supreme Leader,” Ren says, low and quick. Planting a boot against the railing he had been using as a support, he launches himself forward, moving quickly. “General. You have been summoned.”

Hux watches him for a moment, considering. There is no signal from Ren’s end of their connection, save a sour purple feeling of urgency. “One might think Leader Snoke could use the comm system, like the rest of us,” he tells the holofile, finally, before flicking it shut and following Ren out the door.

The Knight leads him down their usual path, through the corridors, up two decks, three lefts and two rights in that order, to a place where two broad hallways meet. He has to slow now and then; Hux is having trouble keeping up. Hux is having trouble with more than that, in truth – so strange to think that a few hours ago he had been giddy, buzzing with caf and power – but the rest, he knows to hide. He knows how to walk with his back straight and chin lifted with no

At the junction where they usually go left, towards the chamber where Snoke holds his audiences, less than a quarter of the size of the one on Starkiller, Ren stops.

“Well?” snaps Hux, almost out of breath.

Ren turns on his heel. With two long steps, he closes the distance between them and pulls the general up into his arms like one would hold a child.

Hux splutters, bringing his hands up to shove uselessly at Ren’s broad chest. “You lied,” he hisses. “Release me this instant,” he continues. “This instant, Ren. Understood?”

“Yes. And no,” says Kylo Ren, “I don’t think I will.”

With that, he turns right, down the hall leading to the senior command quarters instead, carrying General Hux, commander of the _Finalizer_ , organizer of tens of thousands of lives, inventor of the Starkiller weapon, to bed.


End file.
